Blog Posts From The Brave Programmer

Microsoft WebMatrix, Painless Web Development

Microsoft WebMatrix is everything you need to develop websites. Best thing is that it is free. It’s a 15mb download, and will even get the most novice web developer smiling.

Start developing professional looking websites using Microsoft WebMatrix with a bunch of available web templates. Perhaps you want to start with an Open source web framework such as Wordpress, or Drupal, or Umbraco, or Dotnetnuke, to mention but a few.

What is WebMatrix

WebMatrix is a 15mb download (50mb is you don’t have .NET 4 framework installed). WebMatrix includes a lightweight development tool, A lightweight web server in the form of IIS Express, SQL Compact Edition, and a set of ASP.NET extensions that enable you to build standalone ASP.NET Pages using the new Razor syntax. WebMatrix also includes a set of easy to use database and HTML helpers for performing common web-tasks.

What this means is that you have one tool, one port of call to do all your web development work. You no longer need to have separate web server installs and management tools, separate database servers, separate database management consoles, etc. It’s all housed within one package.

WebMatrix minimises the number of tools you need and concepts you might need to learn in order to get a great looking website up and running.

More than that, WebMatrix allows you to develop in PHP. No it’s not your eyes, and it’s not a typo. That's right, Microsoft and WebMatrix are embracing PHP.

Amongst the open source web applications that you can download and install are:

Create, Customise and Publish

Because WebMatrix is an all in one tool, you can create customise and publish your website all from within WebMatrix.

WebMatrix is task-focused which means you focus on what you want to do and WebMatrix helps you achieve those task. This makes it really easy to get started with web development.

Start by downloading one of the freely available website templates, or even download one of the open source web frameworks. .NET or PHP it makes no difference.

Now that you are up and running you will find that it is all very easy and accessible. WebMatrix provides all the tools and features you’ll need in a single unified interface. No more switching between multiple applications just to perform common web development tasks.

Once your site is done, WebMatrix provides a no-hassle way to get your website out onto the world wide web. Publishing your website is as easy as a few clicks.

If your publishing hosts support it, WebMatrix can publish to your host with no extra setup steps. Then you would be guaranteed that your website would run as expected.

If not, you can still publish using the old faithful FTP. But you don’t have to get involved with all that. Just let WebMatrix do the job for you.